Audio, Sound & Speakers Posts - Page 3

CES 2015 - Logitech has one of the best portable speakers on the market with its UE BOOM, but it has just expanded this range with the announcement of the new UE MEGABOOM.

Logitech's newest portable speaker is IPX7 certified waterproof, featuring a stain-resistant acoustic skin, weighs less than two pounds, features a 20-hour battery life, and 100-foot wireless Bluetooth range. Logitech has a great 'Double Up' feature that allows you to team another UE MEGABOOM (or UE BOOM) for double speaker action, which is really quite impressive when you hear it.

The new UE MEGABOOM will reach the US, and select countries within Europe and Asia sometime this month for a suggested retail price of $299.99.

Designer Claudio Gomboli wants to bring the Classic back to reality, releasing a nifty new concept design. As we've discovered, this design is purely just a concept, with no current means for funding or implementation into the market - but it's certainly not out of the equation for this to happen in the future.

Thanks to the click-wheel making long song list scrolling an easy task, this design is basically a simple cover for an existing iPhone or iPod touch. This means that if Gomboli is to make this as a 3rd-party add on for existing products, expect Apple to not play nice. However if you're already running or are planning to run a jail-broken phone, you should have no issues.

CES 2015 - Peripheral maker NYNE launched the Edge, Verge and Rock water-resistant Bluetooth speakers, designed to be used while exploring the outdoors.

All three speakers support Bluetooth 4.0 for streaming and NFC for one-tap connections. A built-in microphone allows for hands-free calling, along with a USB power bank, 3.55mm aux input and up to 12 hours of battery life.

The Verge, Edge and Rock speakers will be available during Q2 of 2015, with the Verge sporting a $119.95 MSRP, Edge will cost $159.95, and Rock will be available for $299.95.

I sat reading through a press release thinking to myself, "wow these Samsung WAM6500 and WAM7500 speakers look awfully familiar." After a short while I noticed the connection between Samsung's latest creations and the much-loved Portal gun.

Providing a 360-degree path of audio, this new product is said to be able to fill up a room completely with sound using their "ring radiator" technology - helping combat the issue of a speaker almost always projecting its output in a cone-like fashion. Samsung Electronics' Senior Vice President, Jurack Chae, stated in their press release that "with the new WAM7500/6500 people can enjoy a vibrant sound wherever they are, while our new Curved Soundbars perfectly complement the TV viewing experience."

HP hasn't made a big fuss over its new Chromebook 14 Touch, but the new Google-powered notebook features a 14-inch Full HD WLED backlit touchscreen.

The previous model in HP's Chromebook 14 line had just a 1366x768 panel, but this new Chromebook 14 Touch, according to HP, features around eight hours of battery life, and much more. NVIDIA's Tegra K1 processor still powers the inside of this Chromebook 14 Touch laptop, but the price is something that should surprise most.

Google has the NVIDIA Tegra K1-powered Chromebook 14 Touch priced at just $440, which is a great price considering the 1920x1080 touchscreen panel and reported eight hours battery life.

Amazon's Echo speaker is still super fresh, but iFixit seem to get their hands-on these devices first, with a beautiful teardown revealing the internals of this smart speaker.

Inside of the 10-inch tall Echo, we have three circuit boards and a bunch of processing chips which are found between two speakers and a bass reflex subwoofer. Texas Instruments silicon chips are found inside for controlling most things from the ring of LED lights, stereo playback and digital signal processing. SanDisk make an appearance with 4GB of flash storage, Samsung provides 256MB of RAM, while Qualcomm finds its way inside of the Echo speaker with a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module.

Some eagle eyed readers might note that we haven't talked about a processor yet, because Echo has its processing done in the cloud. This is an impressive feat, and shows that the future of the cloud is very bright. Amazon's Echo, which is still an "invitation only" device right now, is getting some decent reviews from users so far.

Remember how we told you to hang onto your iPod classic for a little longer as they're discontinued and selling for a mint? Well, if you're looking for a house deposit or a fancy new imported car - now might be the time to auction off your limited edition iPod classic.

Spotted recently on eBay thanks to Mashable, this special edition U2 iPod was auctioned off for a cool $90,000. Factory sealed and engraved with the autographs of U2's band members, this UK edition has surely helped boost some lucky fans bank accounts - and drained another.

After being ripped from Apple Store shelves not too long ago, Bose audio products are rumored to be making a return. iGen.fr, a French Apple website, has a source that said some Apple retail stores have been receiving shipments of Bose products, with orders from management to get them onto the shelves next week.

We still don't know why Apple removed Bose products from their shelves in the first place, but it most likely has something to do with its acquisition of Beats Electronics. Not only that, but the patent infringement that Bose pulled on Beats back in July, which would now obviously affect Apple.

After Apple acquired Beats, Beats and Bose decided to settle the patent dispute between them. This could have filtered down enough that Bose is now on talking terms with Apple once again, maybe.

Logitech has just unveiled the latest member in its ever-growing UE BOOM range of portable speakers, the new Graffiti Fetish Edition UE BOOM. This is the fifth version of the UE BOOM where Logitech has collaborated with artists for a custom-look on its speaker.

The new speaker is now celebrating "the fusion of two art forms" with music, and graffiti gifs. Logitech explains the new speaker as "art, graffiti, fetishism, and desire collide in the Graffiti Fetish edition UE BOOM, a vivid and vibrant print by London street artist Insa". The new Graffiti Fetish Edition UE BOOM can be purchased directly from Logitech's UE BOOM website for $199.99 sometime later this month.

This came about with their site upgrade thanks to the iPhone 6 release, with speculation stating that the old iPod's are no longer needed in today's market - mobile phones are becoming larger and larger in capacity, people are adding massive SD cards to their Android devices and much of our music is now streamed online. All of these factors start to render our old favorite a little bit useless.

Confirmed by CEO Steve Cook as "a declining business" the iPod Classic saw a swift removal from all online portals. But now they're becoming a bit of a rarity, seeing fans paying up to four times the originally listed price. This is said to be not only due to their limited nature, but the capacity that they hold.